Things were better when everyone smoked.
We didn’t need no welfare state, and everybody pulled his weight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d8FTPv955I#t=25
No, we’re quoting a line from “Those Were the Days,” the theme song to the TV show “All in the Family.” It’s a rather tongue-in-cheek paean to nostalgia for old-fashioned things like the sentiment expressed by that line.
Ninjaed!
How big a deal was one’s political affiliation?
I vaguely remember watching a Happy Days episode where Richie’s Dad finds out he’s a Dem.
I remember it being a dramatic scene when Richie finally had the talk with his Dad. It’s almost as if he were coming out as gay in todays standards.
[FWIW, I know Happy Days bears little resemblance to the actual 50’s]
[QUOTE=Twoflower]
Divorce was scandalous.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Ulfrieda]
Expressing one’s individuality was not a value.
[/quote]
These three statements are directly related, and the last one really describes what society was like.It was a totally different mindset.
Rules were rules…and everybody lived by them.
That’s why an adult could spank anyone else’s child, and why kids were better behaved.
But that’s also why McCarthyism happened, and why the colored people stayed in their place.
The phrase “do your own thing” would be a radically new idea, not to be said in public until a decade later.
Thank you everyone for your responses to my question. I had no ideal that
so many would reply. I was born in the final months of the 1950’s so I have
no memory of that period. By the time I was old enough to be aware of what was
going on outside of my neighborhood crime was rising, and some people were
beginning to question and even protest over some of the things that were
happening at that time.
Many of the films and newsreels of the 1950s seem so positive: We defeated
the Nazis! We have harnessed the atom! Conquered polio! We now have the
highest standard of living! And the future is going to bring even better things!!!
Today, there are many who seem negative about progress and the future. Whenever
something new is proposed - a factory complex or shopping mall, high speed rail,
a power plant, electric automobiles, etc. - they complain about it or run off to start a
lawsuit to stop it. I have the impression that in the 1950’s such things would have
been seen as progress toward a better future and would be welcomed by most
people.
I realize that the old films and newsreels of the period and the nostalgic films and TV
shows (American Graffiti, Happy Days, Back to the Future, etc.) do not tell the real
story. So have turned to my friends here at the 'Dope in hopes of getting a better picture.
As an afficionado of guns and knives, I must say that quality of hand-tooled American arms (and maybe other implements) were at their peak in the 1920-1930s and 1940s to 1960s. The saddest example are those Case xx pocket knives. Case’s made from 1945 to 1969 were simply unmatched in quality. American craftsmanship died in the 80s when makers had to scale back in quality to match the second Japanese onslaught. Now, a number of pocket knife makers are trying to re-create those old beauties (with attendant high price.) But they still can’t match the old Case’s.
Another example is the pre-1964 Winchester Model 70 rifle. While post-64 M-70s are better in many aspects, the joy of a pre-64 is something shooters smile at to this day.
When I got my first part-time job, the two locker rooms were in fact labelled “girls” and “men”
This was in 1985…
I think you said it well-the 1950s were all about optimism-the future was good, and we could make it happen. the same applies to the Science Fiction of the '50s-space travel was going to be easy-no problems for American ingenuity.
Later, when we found out just how difficult it was (to maintain life in space), we realized that trips to Mars were not on the horizon.
The USA is no longer the dominant power in the world, and it is a factor…we are like Great Britain in 1950-slowly realizing that we are no longer able to bend the world to our will.
Unfortunately, we seem to be imitating the British (trying to maintain the appearances in defiance of the reality).
Forgot about only having one car, which was my family’s situation until I was seven in 1960. My father carpooled with* four* other men and on his week to drive the rest of us were stuck at home.
Getting a bike was indeed huge; it extended our roaming range by miles. And if you lived out in the sticks like we did, miles were what you needed even to reach the local country store (the forerunners of today’s convenience stores, which didn’t really exist back then).
My grandparents had an outhouse.
Heck, kids around here walk to school alone now, so this isn’t a particularly outdated thing.
It’s interesting that people assume children were better behaved in the 1950s, considering what a huge social issue “juvenile delinquency” was in the 1950s. It was a near-panic, really; the perception was that kids (well, teenagers) were in fact HORRIBLY behaved and out of control. “Blackboard Jungle” came out in 1955 and was a very deliberate play on a common terror of the time; kids were going completely apeshit and turning into savages. The impression adults had at the time - the the 1950s - was pretty much the same you see expressed here now; children were disrespectful, spoiled, lazy and ill-served by an education system that didn’t teach discipline. Much of this was blamed on pop culture.
I wasn’t around in the 1950s, but wasn’t smoking and tobacco use pretty much omnipresent back then in a way that it’s not nowadays?
Yes. Smoking was assumed to be permitted almost everywhere, not just in bars. My mom hated going to PTA meetings as her clothes reeked when she got home and she had to hang them in the garage. Next morning, the garage smelled of stale tobaccy.
I’ve often wondered about where the perception came from. Juvenile delinquency certainly wasn’t an issue in my little midwest town. I knew a couple of boys who got into minor trouble and spent some time in a reform school, but it was indeed minor – property damage or theft, I think. And back then, they’d be given a choice of reform school or the army.
Was it a manufactured social issue? Did people panic because a few kids were dropping out of school or taking joy rides?
Laws yes. You could smoke in doctor’s offices, hospital rooms, movie theaters, stores, airplanes, buses, trains, schools. I think the only place you couldn’t smoke was church.
You quoted my post among many, and I don’t understand why. I live now in a small city in southern Ohio surrounded by farms, and nothing in my post is true of my city or the tiny towns in the county.
Most mothers in my town are not at home during the day. Very few kids walk to school. I don’t know of anyone whose kids walk home from school for lunch or whose kids are allowed to leave their homes and stay out all day playing elsewhere without supervision. There is no segregation by color, only by earnings. Polio and civil defense drills also seem to have disappeared.
I was relating life in my city, not yours. The OP seems to be looking for stories of how we remember our lives back then, so that’s what I gave him. Nitpick if you wish.
Best gift? There were two. My first bike, which allowed hugely expanded freedom of movement in a town where bus service was nearly zero. And the JC Higgins .22 rifle that my brother gave me for my 12th birthday. He ordered it out of the Sears catalog (which was something else peculiar to earlier times) and I still have it.
I remember my mother telling me that your vote was private and that you were under no obligation to tell your affiliation.
In high school I waitressed at the local café in the summers. People were more apt to discuss local issues than national or global. I think what you contributed to the community was more important than what you contributed to a political party.
It’s tricky business living in a small town and people learn to not butt heads if they want to stay there.
And I do remember pretty heated discussions with my mom about abortion and marijuana which used to drive my dad crazy. A very nice result. 
My parents got divorced in 1965. It was unheard of! I thought I was the only kid in town without a dad.
As for bikes, mom didn’t have much money, so my grandfather used to gather parts of old bikes from the rubbish and weld homemade bikes for me. They were the coolest! Unique and weird.
I believe Socrates complained of the problem. 